By January, things between Lou and Hans were starting to feel contentious. 

Lou had been promised so many things — like a contract…an office, or even just a proper desk — but nothing ever happened to give Lou a professional posture inside of the company. Lou would meet privately with Steve leading up to the end of the year, and after those meetings, I remember Lou expressing a desire to keep trying to make things work. 

Steve and Lou had so many similar experiences with owning and running MLM companies, and I think there was a mutual respect between the two men that surpassed the details of what was going on in the office each day with Hans.

But after the holidays passed, it became obvious that Steve was checking out, and he didn’t want to deal with the dramas of the company anymore. Steve started deferring so many critical decisions to Hans, and so Lou was constantly in an impossible position. In addition, Paola was pretty insistent that Steve spend more time with her, so Steve would suddenly dash off to Europe for ten days — which made it really complicated to move forward when Hans and Lou would actually find some place of agreement. Lou would often describe his days like this:

“I hit the ball, and then I try to drag Hans around the bases. So even hitting a home run will make this game impossible to win!”

But all throughout December, Lou had been on the phone with a company in California that had an amazing line of anti-aging serums based on patented stem cell technologies. Every time Lou got off the phone with someone from this company, he was so excited about how incredible it would be to offer this product to the distributors. But Hans was dubious. 

Hans felt like the products that they already had were good enough, and, he was still trying to embrace a super food mix that Lou brought to the team that Steve absolutely adored. I could never figure out if it was a case of “sibling rivalry” that made Hans such a pain, or if he sincerely had reasons for resisting everything Lou did.

But Lou was certain the stem cell products were worth pursuing — whether Hans supported it or not. So during the second weekend in January, Lou and I used the very last of our frequent flier miles, and we boarded a secret late night flight to LA. Lou was going to spend the weekend with the company that owned the marketing rights to these serums, and I was going to spend some time with one of my best friends who lived in LA. 

Her name is Cristina, and she and her husband moved to LA from Sarasota about four months before Lou and I took off on the first leg of The Imposition Tour. She was a constant confidant in my life — and many of my most humorous emails about my various life dramas seemed to end up in her Inbox!

I remember that Los Angeles was experiencing record cold temperatures that winter, and so the contrast between the balmy Miami weather and the crisp chill of LA was startling. But it was also very refreshing to me. And, spending time with someone who was already totally involved in my crazy journey gave me a much-needed sounding board that weekend. 

I remember being able to unburden my feelings about so many things to Cristiana. She seemed to feel my pain right along with me, and, she had no judgments and no need for me to qualify my thoughts for her. She was, is, and always will be one of my most beautiful friends. 

Plus, we had the added benefit of doing some “California Dreamin” about what it would be like for us to both live in the same state again!

But I never let myself get too carried away with anything in my life back then. I had a certain kind of shell shock from the way things would happen with such suddenness. And, I was still pretty aware of Lou’s health issues. 

He wasn’t bleeding as much as he was before, however, he had started to pass these massive blood clots that were excruciatingly painful. When one would pass, Lou would nearly pass out from the pain. (One time, he actually did. We were at P.F. Chang’s, and I had to ask a waiter to check in on Lou in the men’s room after he was gone for close to 20 minutes. Ugh.) There was never a warning when he was about to pass a clot, so we were both consistently on edge every time Lou would visit the washroom. 

This clotting situation made it troubling for me to be apart from Lou that weekend. I knew Lou could be quick to dismiss his health to try to get things going for us financially, but for me, another health setback was a constant fear. I just felt so vulnerable about things — like how the long flight from Miami to LA would impact him, or Lou’s tendency to overdo it because he was trying too hard. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop – because I had compelling evidence to prove that the first one already had!

What if Lou passed out in the middle of this interview, too?

Some of my fears seem irrational to me now, but back then, I was so consumed with the worst-case scenarios almost all of the time. Any parts of my personality that were still positive or optimistic were hibernating that winter. 

So when Lou showed up after his weekend retreat, I was rattled to see that Lou looked just like his old self! I remember feeling a flood of emotions that I was afraid to trust. Lou looked strong, and tall… And, completely beautiful. When he got out of the car he wrapped his arms around me.

It was the first time in a long while that I felt like Lou could lift me out of this pit of worry I lived in, and carry me away to a better place.